{"id":23,"date":"2003-02-07T00:21:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-07T00:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/?p=23"},"modified":"2003-02-07T00:21:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-07T00:21:00","slug":"23","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2003\/02\/23\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>The Seven Deadly Assumptions of Technical Communication &#8211; William Rice<\/h3>\n<p>Years ago, as a young programmer\/analyst on a project leader\u2019s course, I made an assumption during a team exercise. Not a crucial mistake, you would think. I assumed that I had all the information I needed to complete the exercise. I also assumed that the exercise was about interviewing a potential employee. In fact, the exercise was actually about the danger of not identifying and confirming assumptions before blindly rushing on with the task at hand. <\/p>\n<p>In this article, I identify seven areas in the field of technical communication where unconfirmed assumptions can lead to a waste of time and money and also undermine your credibility. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.williamrice.com\/techcomm\/sevenassumptions\/7assump1.html\" title=\"takes you to the article William Rice's website\"><b>Read more<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">\n<map name=\"google_ad_map_061219083745030207002100\">\n<area shape=\"rect\" href=\"http:\/\/imageads.googleadservices.com\/pagead\/imgclick\/061219083745030207002100?pos=0\" coords=\"1,2,367,28\"\/>\n<area shape=\"rect\" href=\"http:\/\/services.google.com\/feedback\/abg\" coords=\"384,10,453,23\"\/><\/map>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" usemap=\"#google_ad_map_061219083745030207002100\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/imageads.googleadservices.com\/pagead\/ads?format=468x30_aff_img&amp;client=ca-pub-1259014363012020&amp;channel=9138153052&amp;output=png&amp;cuid=061219083745030207002100&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Ftw-india.blogspot.com%2F2003%2F02%2Fseven-deadly-assumptions-of-technical.html\"\/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Seven Deadly Assumptions of Technical Communication &#8211; William Rice Years ago, as a young programmer\/analyst on a project leader\u2019s course, I made an assumption during a team exercise. Not a crucial mistake, you would think. I assumed that I had all the information I needed to complete the exercise. I also assumed that the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"jetpack-portfolio-admin-thumb":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Suman Kumar","author_link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/author\/suman-kumar\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The Seven Deadly Assumptions of Technical Communication &#8211; William Rice Years ago, as a young programmer\/analyst on a project leader\u2019s course, I made an assumption during a team exercise. Not a crucial mistake, you would think. I assumed that I had all the information I needed to complete the exercise. I also assumed that the&hellip;","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2Gbk8-23","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":717,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/need-inputs-talk-on-usability-for-technical-writers-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":0},"title":"Need inputs: Talk on usability for technical writers","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"May 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi folks, I have been invited to talk about usability to a bunch of people that are training to be technical communicators. The duration of the session is two hours. I don't want it to be a 'words only' session. Of course, I would be talking to them about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2002\/07\/136\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":1},"title":"The Art of UI Prototyping\u2026","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"July 22, 2002","format":false,"excerpt":"The Art of UI Prototyping By Scott Berkun, November 2000 Even the brightest people make mistakes. This is especially true for teams of people. Somehow, as a project moves forward, small assumptions and well-intentioned but poor decisions accumulate, turning hours of work into a lousy user experience. The smart teams\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":82,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/need-inputs-talk-on-usability\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":2},"title":"Need inputs: Talk on usability","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"May 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi folks, I have been invited to talk about usability to a bunch of people that are training to be technical communicators. The duration of the session is two hours. I don't want it to be a 'words only' session. Of course, I would be talking to them about the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Uncategorized\"","block_context":{"text":"Uncategorized","link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/tag\/uncategorized\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2003\/01\/6\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":3},"title":"What is Technical Communication? It's\u2026","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"January 14, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"What is Technical Communication? It's the process of gathering information from experts and presenting it to an audience in a clear, easily understandable form. These \"experts\" can be engineers, scientists, doctors, lawyers, or anyone else with a special knowledge of a certain field of study. Technical communicators gather knowledge from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Uncategorized\"","block_context":{"text":"Uncategorized","link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/tag\/uncategorized\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2003\/04\/25\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":4},"title":"Technical Communication Mailing Lists http:\/\/www.stcatlanta.org\/maillist.htm","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"April 12, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Technical Communication Mailing Lists http:\/\/www.stcatlanta.org\/maillist.htm","rel":"","context":"In \"Uncategorized\"","block_context":{"text":"Uncategorized","link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/tag\/uncategorized\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44,"url":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/44\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":5},"title":"How to become a technical\u2026","author":"Suman Kumar","date":"November 24, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"How to become a technical writer I got a few mails from aspiring tech writers asking how to be a technical writer. I'll assume that you guys are asking me 'how to get a technical writer's job'. Please note that the content below is inspired by what little I know;\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Uncategorized\"","block_context":{"text":"Uncategorized","link":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/tag\/uncategorized\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumankumar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}